


Janet and Melanie During the Events of Zombies in Pjs

by miss_nettles_wife



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, gratuitous pop culture references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 14:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15487722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin.





	Janet and Melanie During the Events of Zombies in Pjs

**Author's Note:**

> whoops.

Janet has become a light sleeper. It was out of need, of course. She’d almost been caught a handful of times back in the day (or, hour) and as a result she found herself incredibly sensitive to the sounds of opening and closing doors. Among other things of course, but doors especially. There was something about the hinges turning that just filled her with a sense of dread. So, despite being bundled up in the attic when she heard the downstairs door open, she was suddenly awake and flooded with adrenaline.

“Mel.” She whispered, leaning over to the other side of the shared quilt and poking her in the arm. “Mel, wake up!”  
“Mmmmm.” Melanie replied, rolling over as well as she could on the old overstuffed couch. She did not share Janet’s anxiety about such things.  
“Mel!” She insisted, moving from poking to shaking.  
“What?” Melanie asked, hands coming up to rub her eyes. She did look cute when she had just woken up but there was no time to dwell on that now.  
“Did you hear the downstairs door open?”  
“No? Did it?”  
“Yeah.” She sat up, finally.  
“You think there’s someone in the house? Janet, you’re not in the lost hour anymore; that doesn’t happen here.” Janet thinks that it does, but she doesn’t take the time to explain her true-crime enthusiast views to herself. In fact, she’s probably inclined to believe that this sort of thing happens more frequently in Eerie than it does in any other place in America potentially the world.  
“I’d feel better if we checked anyway.” The television in front of them played nothing but static, the VHS tape having finished while they slept. Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Mustn’t have been that interesting if they fell asleep in a movie from a series of movies about not falling asleep. Melanie looked a little annoyed but tossed off the quilt anyway. She was still wearing the jeans and paint splattered t-shirt she put on that morning. Janet had changed halfway through Halloween 4: Return of Michael Myers into a pair of sleep pants and a t-shirt with a large illustration of Cher on it.

She retrieved the axe handle from under the couch (it was a weapon that Melanie’s dad kept under his bed to protect his family should he need to. They had co-opted it to bring when they faced off against the forces of weirdness themselves. Which happened more often than either of them would like to admit even when they weren’t hanging around Marshall and Simon. Janet grabbed hold of a Skip-it, which she had decorated with flower and Star-Wars stickers. As a toy, Skip-Its weren’t that fun, but they did make for a pretty good improvised weapon. It was just a weight on a string with a handle, basically.

Now armed, they both padded down the ladder, crossed the second floor and then walked down onto the ground floor without speaking to one another. If there was someone in the house, they didn’t want to make themselves known just yet. But they didn’t see anyone. The front door was wide open, but there was no one visible. Nothing seemed to be disturbed, and there were no sounds of rustling. She looked around. The kitchen cupboards were closed, and the downstairs television was off. The phone was still on the hook and examination revealed the line was not cut.

From the sound of Melanie wandering around the dining room there was no one there either. They met up in the foyer. Cautiously, they approached the door and looked outside. It seemed that the whole street was walking slowly, more like trudging. They’d watched Dawn of the Dead two days ago and they reminded Janet strongly of the walking dead. She gave Melanie an alarmed look, and they both padded out onto the front lawn barefoot. It was a chilly, but not especially cold evening. It tickled her nose but didn’t bite it. The grass was soft under foot but not squishy.

“Where are they going?” Janet asked, alarmed.  
“Why are they going?” Melanie countered, watching as her father and mother made their way down the otherwise normal suburban street. They stood for a moment. Janet watched her own parents and sister make their way down the road, having walked from her house which was just across the road from Melanie. It was why she was allowed to stay over for nights at a time, so long as she came home everyday to see her parents and check in. She pretended to hate it but really, she found it very comforting. She technically didn’t have to call them before they turned in for the night, but she did anyway.

Actually, come to think of it. She’d called her parents around nine pm to say goodnight (she could have just crossed the road, but they had been in the middle of Nightmare on Elm street 3: Dream Warriors and she didn’t want to leave the attic. Anyway, she’d called her parents at nine pm and they hadn’t picked up. She’d thought they were just going to bed early like Melanie’s parents and hadn’t thought it was particularly odd. But now it seemed like there was something going on with Eerie.

When was there something NOT going on with Eerie?

She turned to look at Melanie who had produced a full-size telescope from somewhere and was using it to look towards the direction of town.  
“Hm.”  
“What?”  
“Looks like the World O’Stuff is having a sale.”  
“There’s no way to see the World O’ Stuff from here.” Janet said, annoyed.    
“Blessed telescope.”  
“Eh?”  
“Look. It shows you whatever you want to see.” Janet wiped the eye piece on her arm to make sure there was no charcoal (she was pretty sure she wasn’t being Prank’d but there was no way for her to be sure.) and held the ancient device to her eye feeling like a pirate.  Sure enough, the World O’ Stuff came into focus. There was a large sign stuck to the front of the store which read ‘EZ-Credit’ and all the Zombies-in-Pjs were filing inside. She recognized the twins who drove the ambulance (among other professions), some of the Foreverware Women, Devon Wilde’s parents, the Tellers (of course, where there was weirdness, there was likely to be a Teller) Mr and Mrs Holmes (though no Harley, interestingly or not since the kid was basically the Anti-Christ) the local priest, several basket ball players she knew from school and a selection of other various town members. Who she didn’t see was Mayor Chisel, which struck her as odd, but she didn’t bother to question it. Likely, the answer would just be upsetting.

Then, she saw Marshall and Simon. And Marshall’s weird alien boyfriend.

“Ya know?” Melanie said, as Janet lowered the telescope. “I kinda think this isn’t our problem.” Janet handed her back the telescope, which she tucked into a pocket in her jeans.  
“I…Would be inclined to agree with you.” She agreed. “Marshall has Simon and his weird boyfriend. They probably have it under control.”  
“And if it doesn’t, well, none of our business.”  
“Sounds about right. He’d probably just accuse us of being in the way.”  
“Probably.”

They went back into the house and back to the attic, returning their weapons to under the chair. They both grabbed a handful of VHS tapes.  
“Should we cross off Nightmare on Elm Street 4?”  
“Well…I guess we technically didn’t watch it.”  
“Yeah but…I don’t want to watch it again it was so …Boring.”  
“Maybe we circle it to come back to later.”  
“I don’t think that Nightmare on Elm Street is a franchise that requires a lot of prior viewing.” Janet said, but circled it anyway in her red marker pen.  
“Yeah. I’m kinda done with Freddy for a while.” Melanie said, and picked up Halloween 5: Revenge of Michael Myers. “How about some good old Michael?” Janet squinted at the cover.

“That kid looks like you.” Melanie turned the hard-plastic case towards her and squinted.  
“No, she doesn’t.”  
“Yeah she does, same nose.”  
“I don’t imply you look like every red-head we happen to stumble across.” Melanie retorted, sliding the VHS into the player.  
“Yeah, ‘because I don’t look like every red head we stumble across.” Janet replied, “But you look like Myers niece. I’m not crazy.”  
“I dunno. You might be. Anyway, the kids played by Dannielle Harris, I am clearly Melanie Monroe.” Pause. “And Devon.” Mars was sceptical about Melanie’s connection to Devon, but Janet wasn’t. She’d experienced far too many instances of Melanie absently commenting on things that she had no way of knowing but Devon did.

Like when Janet was seven, she accidentally dropped and broke her whole ‘Elder Gods’ art project in front of him and he sacrificed his lunch hour to help her fix it up. Melanie couldn’t know that. She hadn’t mentioned it at the time, but she found it very comforting that he was still here, albeit tucked away inside of Melanie Monroe.

“She looks just like your baby pictures.” Janet insisted, as they found their way back inside the blanket. Melanie’s mother had insisted that Janet should see all her baby pictures, and youth pictures, and teen pictures.  
“She does not!” Melanie insisted, putting her head on Janet’s arm.

Whatever weirdness was going on out there was Marshall’s problem. Even so, she kept one hand on the Skip It, lest she need to defend them.  



End file.
